


and always when i smell the bloom i think upon the dead

by peachfuzz (johniaurens)



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Angst, Character Study, Gen, Minor Character Death, i literally turned this in as a major grade langlit assignment i cant believe my life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-18
Updated: 2016-02-18
Packaged: 2018-05-21 09:20:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6046320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/johniaurens/pseuds/peachfuzz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For Ashley, the bodies did not come as a surprise. It wasn't so much that first there were no bodies and then there were. It was more like the bodies had always been there and then they weren't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and always when i smell the bloom i think upon the dead

**Author's Note:**

> additional warnings:  
> \- non-graphic descriptions of murder/violence  
> \- animal cruelty  
> \- discussion of eating disorders  
> \- abusive parents  
> \- possibly disturbing content
> 
> Title is from the poem "The Lilac Tree" by Wilfrid Wilson Gibson.
> 
> i took some liberties with this wrt canon since i actually turned this in as an assignment so shrugs

For five seconds everything is completely quiet. And then the pin drops.

It takes Ashley two seconds to realize that she did not dodge the bullet she thought she did. It's definitely there, lodged in the space between her articular cartilage and clavicle, shoulder and collarbone. She knows she must be bleeding, but by now she knows better than to touch the wound.  
“Medic”, she hears someone shout through a dream-like haze, pain spreading like hairline fractures from her collarbone through her entire body.  
When the paramedics burst through the door she has already passed out.

_Lilac trees..._

She wakes up in the ambulance, her limbs heavy and eyes dry. Someone is putting a mask on her, and she knows she's going straight to surgery. In the twenty seconds between consciousness and synthetic sleep Ashley closes her eyes and tries not to think.

  * _The sound of shovel to dirt, shovel to rock, shovel to bone_
  * _The humid heat of summer air wrapped around her like a blanket_
  * _The rosebushes by the porch_
  * _The bloody saw in the garage_
  * _Shovel to bone, shovel to bone, shovel to bone..._



The thing about hospitals is that they make her remember. The white light. The dry air. The graves by the lilac trees. Her mother's empty eyes when they dug out body after body from her garden. The smell of dust and dirt and bloody knuckles.

_Lilac trees ---_

For Ashley, the bodies did not come as a surprise. It wasn't so much that first there were no bodies and then there were. It was more like the bodies had always been there and then they weren't. See, before there were graves, there were the little things no one wanted to notice. The gifts. The late nights. The mood swings and the threats and the way he had suddenly stopped seeing his friends. Ashley didn't notice, of course, she _couldn't_ have. But she did. How could she _not_ have noticed? How could she not have _known_?

_There was a girl in the basement. She must have been fifteen, sixteen at most, and to eight year old Ashley she looked like a princess. The blood on her face and dress were the only thing that gave away the fact that she was dead (had been for a week at that point, Ashley learned later). It was an eerie sight, really – the girl's face was oddly peaceful, like she had already held her breath for two minutes and the invisible hands had finally lifted from her throat, like she could finally breathe ----_

_\---- the puppy was small enough to fit in her father's fist, and in hindsight she knows that it could not have been older than four weeks at most. She was six. It is the first time she remembers being scared of her father._  
_She still remembers the details. The dull, sickening crunch of bone against bone. The thin trickle of blood from the mouth of the dog. The glee on her father's face when she started to cry, and the dog's dead, dead eyes ----_

_\---- the bruises on her father's body seemed to always linger, like he just couldn't stop getting into fistfights he knew he'd keep losing because he just couldn't get enough of the taste of blood in his mouth. Sometimes they were just bruises. Reminders of the fact that the human body is fragile and the world is harsh. And then there were shapes. Footprints. Fingerprints. The shape of an open palm. Like if someone were to paint a picture of desperation using only bodies as the medium ----_

_\---- when Ashley was diagnosed with anorexia the first time at sixteen after passing out in gym class her father made her drive home from the doctor's office. He was silent the first five miles and at the first red light he turned to face her from the passenger's seat._  
_“Ashley”, beat, “Why?”_  
_How could she tell her father that she wanted to see how small she would have to make herself to be small enough for her father to take her into his fist and break like he'd broken that dog ten years ago? How could she tell her father that she just wanted to have something in the world to herself and that her body was the last thing she could claim as her own? How could she tell her father that he had gone from being the one checking for monsters underneath her bed to_ being _the monster underneath her bed? ----_

She knew. She knew. She didn't know what she knew, sure, but in the blue-red flash of the sea of police cars parked down their driveway she had a feeling of déjà vu. Like someone had taken her by the back of the neck and said _Pay attention, Ashley. This is important._ It all made sense, and if that isn't twisted then Ashley doesn't know what is. The sense of understanding after years of not knowing should not have been so bittersweet. Later, psychologists would diagnose her with post-traumatic stress disorder. Her anorexia would come crashing back. But right now, all that there was was the quiet hum of the lilac trees and the dead bodies of the twenty seven girls her father had buried in their backyard.

_The lilac trees, Ashley, the lilac trees --- never go near them, you hear me? Do you understand? Don't go near them. Leave the lilac trees alone._

_The lilac trees ---_

While the doctors remove the bullet from between her clavicle and articular cartilage Ashley dreams of the smell of lilac trees in the summer air and the bullet her mother put into her own head three years ago.


End file.
